The impact of ants and vertebrate predators on arthropods and plants: a meta-analysis

We report a meta-analysis of 486 experiments gathered from 157 publications reporting the effect of insectivorous vertebrates (birds and bats) and ants on richness and abundances of all arthropods; predatory (spiders, ants, others) and herbivorous (chewers and others) arthropods; and on plant damage. We conducted an extensive survey of the literature on manipulative field studies where (i) birds, bats, lizards, and ants were experimentally excluded individually or in combination with either field cages or netting, (ii) matched with appropriate open-access controls, and (iii) the effects of their removal were measured on terrestrial plants and/or naturally occurring arthropod populations or communities. In Web of Science (All collections) and Google Scholar, we searched the terms “bird AND exclosure”, “bat AND exclosure”, “ant AND exclosure” and “lizard AND exclosure”. In addition, we searched for the term “exclusion” instead of “exclosure”, in the same combinations. Our initial search found 546, 18, 19 and 4 studies, respectively. Subsequently, we removed all duplicates, and we ended up with 382 potentially suitable studies. We also identified several meta-analyses such as (Mooney et al. 2010) who reviewed 64 studies and (Maas 2019) who reviewed 30 to identify any studies we had missed. We identified a further 153 suitable studies and topped up the dataset with 4 unpublished datasets which we obtained by contacting authors directly.我们报道了一项元分析（meta-analysis），其整合了来自157篇文献的486项实验，探究了食虫脊椎动物（鸟类与蝙蝠）以及蚂蚁对所有节肢动物、捕食性（蜘蛛、蚂蚁及其他类群）和植食性（咀嚼类及其他类群）节肢动物的物种丰富度与种群丰度，以及对植物受损程度的影响。我们针对操控性野外实验开展了全面的文献调研，此类实验需满足以下条件：（1）通过野外笼具或网罩，对鸟类、蝙蝠、蜥蜴及蚂蚁进行单独移除或组合移除；（2）设置匹配合适的开放式对照样地；（3）测定移除这些类群后对陆生植物和/或自然节肢动物种群或群落的影响。我们在Web of Science（全馆藏）与Google Scholar中，以"鸟类 AND 排除围栏（exclosure）"、"蝙蝠 AND 排除围栏"、"蚂蚁 AND 排除围栏"及"蜥蜴 AND 排除围栏"为检索式进行检索；此外，我们将检索词中的"exclosure"替换为"exclusion"，以相同组合方式开展检索。初始检索分别得到546、18、19及4项相关研究。随后我们剔除了所有重复文献，最终得到382项潜在符合要求的研究。我们还通过查阅相关元分析文献补充检索遗漏的研究，例如Mooney等人2010年的研究（其综述了64项相关实验）及Maas 2019年的研究（其综述了30项实验），由此额外筛选出153项符合要求的研究；此外我们通过直接联系作者获取了4项未发表的数据集，以此补充完善本数据集。